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Women carry a boy over a wall as civilians flee their houses in the village of Tob Zawa, Iraq, about 9 kilometers (5.6 miles) from Mosul, Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2016, as Iraq’s elite counterterrorism forces fight against Islamic State militants. ... more >

Iraqi citizens along the outskirts of Mosul are telling coalition forces of the torturous existence they lived for the past two years under the Islamic State group.

Kurdish peshmerga, Iraqi forces and Shiite militias that are tightening a military noose around Islamic State in a city of 1.5 million people are running across thousands of grateful villagers. Residents of Faziliya said suicide bombings, lashings for seemingly trivial religious offenses and executions for owning cellphones have been a way of life.

“Sometimes [Islamic State terrorists] would just show up in a village around here wearing a suicide belt and blow himself up,” Assad Ali Hassan, 45, said Monday, The Wall Street Journal reported. “They would get small children like this to flog grown men in public. They would slide a pen into your beard, and if it didn’t stay, if it fell out because the beard wasn’t long enough, you would get lashings.

Others said that women with exposed hands were subjected to show trials that ended with an Islamic State judge biting their extremities as punishment.

One woman tried on black gloves and a black niqab that covered her entire body — including the eyes — before quickly taking it off because it upset her child.

“I can’t believe I had to wear that for more than two years,” the victim said, The Journal reported. “I can’t believe I was able to put it on again.”

Military officials say that liberating a city the size of Mosul may take months due to the time Islamic State had to prepare for the offensive. The terror group has controlled the area since June 2014.

“God willing, we will chop off the snake’s head,” Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said Monday on state television, Reuters reported. “They have no escape. They either die or surrender.”

United Nations officials have estimated that as many as 1 million refugees may flee the city in a worst-case scenario.